Wednesday, 4 July 2012

On skelingtons

A correspondent writes to ask about a usage he has spotted in Dickens: Noah Claypole’s millingtary for military, and wonders whether there are any other such uses of ing for the vowel. He mentions a children’s use of skelington for skeleton. Are there any others?

I know about skelington: it’s definitely a regional dialect feature. Joseph Wright’s English Dialect Dictionary has examples of it across the country, from Yorkshire to Dorset. It’s spelled variously, such as skelenton and skillenton. Thomas Hardy uses the latter in Tess, for example, and there are two instances recorded in the OED, under atomy and know, and three examples in Wiktionary.

The Cockney use is the most famous one, and there are several stories about it, such as this one, from an online bio:

‘In a biology lesson we were shown a human skeleton and when asked by the mistress if anyone knew what it was called I shoved my hand up with some, later regretted, haste and stated quite clearly to the whole class that it was a ‘skellington’! The class erupted into paroxysms of giggling, much whispering behind hands, pitying glances and I went scarlet with embarrassment. I had no idea what I had said to get this reaction because I heard what people said, I didn’t judge them on how they said it. The mistress scathingly repeated what I had said and joined the pupils in mocking my accent.’

Or this poetic extract:

A muvver was barfin 'er biby one night,
The youngest of ten and a tiny young mite,
The muvver was poor and the biby was thin,
Only a skelington covered in skin.

Dickens has millingtary a second time - by the hairdresser in Master Humphry’s Clock (Chapter 5) – so it’s not just an idiosyncrasy of Claypole. And it turns up in several regional dialects too, on both sides of the Atlantic. Horatio Alger, for example, uses it in Randy of the River; so does R M Ballantyne in In the Track of the Troops. If you're searching, remember that there are spelling variations here too; the word often appears with a single l.

I can’t think offhand of other textual examples of an ing substitution for a short i. Has anyone come across them?

15 comments:

The only person I ever heard say skelington in a live situation definitely said skelinton, and he also used the older pronunciation -in for the gerund-participle suffix -ing. So I think this form involves a reanalysis of the learned word skeleton as skel- + -in(g) + -ton.

A correspondent from another forum sends me a further example, from Henry Fielding's Joseph Andrews: ironing for irony in the following:

“Yes Madam!” replied Mrs. Slipslop with some warmth, “Do you intend to result my passion? Is it not enough, ungrateful as you are, to make no return to all the favours I have done you: but you must treat me with ironing? Barbarous monster! how have I deserved that my passion should be resulted and treated with ironing?"

Skelington sounds like the familiar name Wellington — which used to be even more familiar. Could this have a bearing? If not on the coining of the form, then perhaps on the survival?

The ing is meaningless, but British place names include many where historic ing was meaningful but somewhat redundant : e.g. places with -ington or -ingham. My home town of Nottingham, for instance, would still have been 'Snot's Place' without the ing. Is it possible that the extra suffix was inserted for euphony?

I can immediately think of Bolton, Boston, Preston, Wigton, Charlton... . I bet there are hundreds more. OK, some must be based on town in the modern sense. But I bet there's a core based on an Old English tun — not all that different from an Old English ing.

Hang on. Something went wrong with the phonetics, I think. That 'at' symbol shouldn't be there. The issue isn't about names ending in 'ton', of which there are thousands. It's words ending in 'ton' preceded by 'in', with a short vowel.

I grew up, with many others, calling Eglinton Avenue in Toronto (apparently named after a Toronto neighbourhood and ultimately after Eglinton Castle in Scotland) "Eglington." Wikipedia tells me that it was at one time actually spelled Eglington.

Forthcoming lectures

About Me

Follow by Email

Disclaimer

I may use content from my blog from time to time in my publications, and this may involve incorporating comments from the forum, without individual attribution, often in adapted form. If anyone does not wish their comment ever to be used in this way they should make this clear on submission.

I accept no liability for any material submitted to the forum and I am not responsible for its content or accuracy.

With rare exceptions, I do not publish posts from people called 'Anonymous'. I like to know who I'm talking to.